Chechen Roulette

IVAN RYBKIN / COMMENTARY / Wall Street Journal 29oct02

Mr. Rybkin is a former speaker of the Duma and head of Russia's Security Council from 1996-98.

MOSCOW -- It was a sad irony last week that the news of the hostage-taking here reached me while I was in the U.S. speaking about Chechnya. My meetings in Washington, alas, convinced me that the U.S. has yet to grasp the essence of the Chechen conflict. The Bush administration continues to pursue a policy that is not conducive to a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

After Sept. 11, Russia's campaign against Chechen separatists acquired an international flavor -- Washington and Moscow agreed to call it a part of the global war against terror. But the agreement didn't play out the way it should have done. Instead of forging a new common purpose, our cooperation with the U.S. on the global scene gave a boost to Russia's own ill-conceived and failed Chechen policy.

The dissonance is striking. The undeclared war in Chechnya has long since lost support of the majority of the Russian people -- 60% are for immediate cease-fire and negotiations with the rebels. (In an odd twist, the terrorists that took hostages in Moscow demanded what the majority of Russians wanted all along -- to end the war.) But Vladimir Putin, the president, has ignored this widespread yearning for peace. Participation in the American-led coalition against terror gave his administration breathing room -- it can and does insist that its domestic battle with the Chechens represents a campaign against the same evil that terrorized the world on Sept. 11, 2001.

It claims it now has the world's support for that effort, but that's hardly the case. The sole cause for continuing the carnage is the fear of admitting a political fiasco. The current appearance of foreign support is a trade-off; should Russia contradict the U.S. on Iraq she would face a storm of criticism on Chechnya. But the truth is that Chechen conflict has very little to do with the al Qaeda brand of pan-Islamism. Our war has local origins, rooted in the history of the Russian Empire and the memories of deportation by Stalin during World War II. The Chechen conflict is similar to the problems of the Basques in Spain or Northern Ireland in the U.K. But rather than see through its thin resemblance to the recent terrorism of jihadis, the U.S. has played along, even encouraging our government in its stubborn insistence that Chechnya is another Afghanistan, and that President Aslan Maskhadov is Russia's bin Laden.

This sort of false diagnosis, predictably enough, brings wrong treatment. When the root causes are not addressed the condition deteriorates. Consider what happened within the past year, which began with the last official contact with the rebels and ended with the hostage disaster in Moscow.

In November 2001, the Chechen envoy Akhmed Zakayev held talks in Moscow with President Putin's representative, Gen. Viktor Kazantsev. At the time, moderate Chechens were resisting pressure from extremists. Mr. Zakayev made an unprecedented offer to Moscow: he agreed to the status of wide autonomy for Chechnya and suggested the introduction of direct Moscow rule there for the interim period. It should have seemed like an obvious choice -- and one that would benefit a large number in both areas. But the government was not responsive, insisting on unconditional capitulation of the rebels. Those who made this decision bear heavy responsibility for the hostage tragedy last week.

Six months after the original breakdown of these talks, I made an attempt to revive the peace process. I wrote an open letter to President Putin and met with Mr. Zakayev in Zurich. The Chechens reconfirmed their willingness to return to the state of negotiations of late 1997 when we were about to reach an agreement acceptable to all sides. But the president ignored our suggestions, as well as the call of Yevgeny Primakov, the former prime minister, to stop fooling ourselves and the rest of the world about Chechnya.

At the time, the Chechen government was pleading with the U.S. to use its influence to convince its newly acquired ally to accept negotiations. But Mr. Maskhadov's envoys met a cool reception in Washington. No one wanted to irritate Moscow. So after being rejected both in Moscow and in Washington, Mr. Maskhadov was left to face his own extremists and deal with the ever-increasing pressure of federal troops. He lost the argument with his militant opponent, Shamil Basayev, that peace with Russia is possible. I trust Akhmed Zakayev when he says that Mr. Maskhadov can no longer restrain the extremists -- who may indeed have some al Qaeda links. The blame for that lies not so much with Mr. Maskahdov as with Moscow, which persists in its wrongful diagnosis endorsed by the U.S.

In spite of last week's horror, it is still possible to return to the negotiating table -- as long as Mr. Maskhadov has not left the scene to give way to a new generation of Chechen leaders brought up by our unwise policies. We saw their face last week in Moscow. If we lose this last chance, we should expect war, and terror, for many decades.

In addition to finding a political formula for the Chechen republic, any peace settlement will have to restrain calls for justice and revenge on both sides, however hard this may sound after last week's carnage. We will have to grant amnesty to all perpetrators of crimes associated with the Chechen conflict. And accept that in our lifetime we will not learn who was behind the explosions of apartment houses in Moscow in September 1999, the still-unsolved crime that served as initial casus belli.

But for peace to be given another chance we need one more thing to happen: Our American friends must stop encouraging the party of war in Moscow and in Chechnya, and de-link -- in word and in deed -- the Chechen issue from Russia's participation in the noble fight against international terrorism.